5.30.2013

Growing up we had a Patrick Nagel print
hanging on a wall in the dining room. It's exactly the one you're thinking of. Or maybe not. A lot of them have thatwoman in
them. You know, the woman on the cover of Duran Duran's Rio. I never
much cared for it. Oh, I loved the album, just not the print hanging
on the wall in our dining room. My dad really liked that whole
style; that very 80s, minimalist, pastel thing. My dad really liked
the 80s, in general. And the 80s liked my dad. They made sense
together. He was newly single, very handsome, a great cook, liked to
travel, play tennis, hang glide and party. And, of course, he was
into the art.

5.27.2013

I've been thinking about the handful of
fruits and vegetables that we use in cooking but would never just pop into
our mouths, fresh. I mean to say, foods that require a significant
transformation for them to be edible, like olives, rhubarb and
cranberries. Olives have to be fermented or cured, rhubarb has toxic
leaves and is almost always macerated then baked. And cranberries,
have you ever tried to just eat a cranberry? Not pleasant. And
acorns. It has never even occurred to me to eat an acorn. Yet,
it is a nut. Squirrels eat acorns. And throughout history acorns have
been used, ground up to make grain flours and even used as a coffee
substitute for soldiers in both the Civil War and World War II.

5.19.2013

Even
though we have a very, very long history of written correspondence
via the good old post office, for the past few years Paz and I have
been taking turns sending each other 'care packages'. They are kind
of, but not necessarily, for birthdays, Christmas, and the like. The
ones from me show up on time – unless I accidentally send one to
her childhood address where a bunch of frat boys now live, or I mess
up the postage, for no good reason at all. The ones from Paz, well,
they show up when they show up. I received my last birthday package
on the first day of Fall. My birthday is in mid-June. And so,
fittingly, she gave me my Christmas package while I was visiting home
last month. In April.

5.11.2013

Yellow
Umbrella, or Yellah Umbrellah as many Richmonders call it, has
been serving up choice seafood in Richmond's West End since my whole
life (they opened in 1975). I only learned about the place a few
years ago but it quickly became my The Go-To for extraordinary –
and sustainably harvested - fresh fish (when I was in town, of
course). I also always had to grab some of their remarkable prepared
cheese grits right before checking out. Random, right? Not in the
South.

5.04.2013

I was back in my old stomping grounds last week. Spring in Richmond is breathtaking. Dogwoods, daffodils, azaleas, and zillions of tiny inchworms falling from the sky onto everything. Falling onto everything. That was a new one for me. I thought they were sort of cute and endearing and the whole thing seemed very biblical, or like the end of Magnolia, but with inchworms not frogs. Then I Googled 'inchworm' and changed my tune. Take a macro look at one of those bad boys and then see how cute one is inching its way up your sleeve. But still, Fred was way girlier about it than I was.